The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Story of Homecoming

by Henri J.M. Nouwen

the splendid drawings and paintings he created in the midst of all his setbacks, disillusionment, and grief,

“You have been looking for friends all your life; you have been craving for affection as long as I’ve known you; you have been interested in thousands of things; you have been begging for attention, appreciation, and affirmation left and right.

But there are many other voices, voices that are loud,

These voices say, “Go out and prove that you are worth something.”

They suggest that I am not going to be loved without my having earned it through determined efforts and hard work. They want me to prove to myself and others that I am worth being loved, and they keep pushing me to do everything possible to gain acceptance.

They have come to me through my parents, my friends, my teachers,

Constantly falling back into an old trap, before I am even fully aware of it, I find myself wondering why someone hurt me, rejected me, or didn’t pay attention to me.

At issue here is the question: “To whom do I belong? To God or to the world?”

To God!

There are endless “ifs” hidden in the world’s love.

Absolutely.

The world’s love is and always will be conditional.

I am the prodigal son every time I search for unconditional love where it cannot be found.

And then I wonder whether anyone ever really loved me.

So true.

The less we have in common, the harder it is to be together and the more estranged we feel.

In retrospect, it seems that the prodigal had to lose everything to come into touch with the ground of his being.

A voice, weak as it seemed, whispered that no human being would ever be able to give me the love I craved, that no friendship, no intimate relationship, no community would ever be able to satisfy the deepest needs of my wayward heart.

Constantly I am tempted to wallow in my own lostness and lose touch with my original goodness, my God-given humanity, my basic blessedness, and thus allow the powers of death to take charge. This happens over and over again whenever I say to myself: “I am no good. I am useless. I am worthless. I am unlovable. I am a nobody.”

There are always countless events and situations that I can single out to convince myself and others that my life is just not worth living, that I am only a burden, a problem, a source of conflict, or an exploiter of other people’s time and energy.

The dark voices of my surrounding world try to persuade me that I am no good and that I can only become good by earning my goodness through “making it” up the ladder of success.

But they often also experience, quite early in life, a certain envy toward their younger brothers and sisters,

I had stayed home and didn’t wander off, but I had not yet lived a free life in my father’s house. My anger and envy showed me my own bondage.

Indeed, something has to happen that I myself cannot cause to happen.

I can only be healed from above, from where God reaches down. What is impossible for me is possible for God. “With God, everything is possible.”

Jesus shows a distinct preference for those who are marginal in society—the poor, the sick, and the sinners—but

I have to let go of all comparison, all rivalry and competition, and surrender to the Father’s love.

because I have little experience of non-comparing love

“this son of yours” he distances himself from his brother as well as from his father.

The elder son no longer has a brother. Nor, any longer, a father. Both have become strangers to him.

I know the pain of this predicament. In it, everything loses its spontaneity. Everything becomes suspect, self-conscious, calculated, and full of second-guessing.

I cannot make myself feel loved.

He begs me to stop clinging to the powers of death and to let myself be embraced by arms that will carry me to the place where I will find the life I most desire.

As I look back on this spiritual event, I see it as a true return, the return from a false dependence on a human father who cannot give me all I need to a true dependence on the divine Father who says: “You are with me always, and all I have is yours”; the return also from my complaining, comparing, resentful self to my true self that is free to give and receive love.

Although we are incapable of liberating ourselves from our frozen anger, we can allow ourselves to be found by God and healed

There is a very strong, dark voice in me that says the opposite: “God isn’t really interested in me,

He doesn’t pay attention to me who has never left the house. He takes me for granted. I am not his favorite son. I don’t expect him to give me what I really want.”

By telling myself that I am not important enough to be found, I amplify my self-complaint until I have become totally deaf to the voice calling for me.

because God has appeared in my darkness, urged me to come home, and declared in a voice filled with affection: “You are with me always, and all I have is yours.”

I can choose to dwell in the darkness in which I stand, point to those who are seemingly better off than I, lament about the many misfortunes that have plagued me in the past, and thereby wrap myself up in my resentment.